


Icarus

by mithrel



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Forgiveness, Light Angst, M/M, Redemption, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Symbolism, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-16 22:35:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20610470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mithrel/pseuds/mithrel
Summary: Crowley finds a feather on his pillow.





	Icarus

Aziraphale kisses him softly, then pulls away. “I love you,” he whispers.

Crowley looks away, as he always does, but Aziraphale takes hold of his chin and forces him to look at him. Crowley wishes suddenly for his sunglasses.

“My dear,” he says quietly, “What will it take for you to believe that you’re _worthy_ of my love?”

Crowley turns away, and Aziraphale lets him. “Nothing, angel,” he mutters, the words sticking in his throat.

“Nothing?” Aziraphale asks gently.

“Nothing possible,” Crowley says, hearing the bitterness in his voice.

“Tell me anyway?”

“I’d have to be…” he trails off, starts again. “I’d have to never have fallen.”

“Oh, my dear,” Aziraphale says, just a breath, but Crowley hears it anyway.

“Don’t _pity_ me, angel!” he snarls. This is why he didn’t want to bring it up. _Look at me, the poor delusional demon who wishes he was still an angel._

“Of course I don’t pity you!” Aziraphale says, unaccustomed fire in his voice and his eyes. “You must learn the difference between pity and sympathy, darling.”

Crowley mutters something unintelligible.

Aziraphale brightens suddenly. “Come here!”

Crowley lets Aziraphale manhandle him to in front of the full-length mirror. He takes his shoulders, positioning them carefully.

Aziraphale is behind him. He’s slightly shorter than Crowley, so he can’t see him in the mirror, but when he cranes his head over his shoulder, Aziraphale says “Stay there.”

He turns about obediently, hears a slight rustle, and Aziraphale’s wings unfold. He’s still not visible, so that it looks as if the wings are sprouting from Crowley’s own shoulders.

Crowley finds his eyes wet, and he turns away, about to snarl again, until he sees the tears on Aziraphale’s own cheeks. He forces a smile.

“Thank you so much for the thought, angel, but it’s not the same.”

“Oh. No,” Aziraphale whispers. “No, I suppose not. Forgive me, darling.”

“Nothing to forgive,” Crowley says, and hastily moves the conversation onto other things.

***

A few days later, Crowley wakes up to see a white feather as long as his forearm on the pillow next to him.

His first thought is that Aziraphale left it there, although they haven’t actually gotten that far in the relationship yet.

But when he picks it up, it doesn’t _feel_ like Aziraphale. He concentrates, trying to find the lingering essence that remains on all shed angel feathers, but there’s…nothing.

Which is odd. Granted, Crowley doesn’t have much recent experience with angels, but he should sense _something._

As he sits up, he catches sight of his face in the mirror and it’s…wrong.

He picks up the mirror, sure it was a trick of the light, but no, his eyes are…it takes him a second to realize what’s different.

His eyes are brown, and the pupils are _round._

Just like human eyes.

He blinks in shock, shaking his head in disbelief. The brown eyes remain just long enough for him to realize it’s not a fluke, then melt into his usual slit-pupiled gaze.

He puts down the mirror and spends ten minutes getting dressed by hand, rather than magicking his clothes on like he usually does.

He puts the feather in his pocket.

***

He forgets about it until he pops by the bookshop that afternoon.

“Oh, something odd happened this morning,” he says, as Aziraphale sets down his tea.

“Oh?”

“Yes. I found this on my pillow,” he takes the feather from his pocket, “but I’ve no clue whose it is. Can you identify it?”

Aziraphale reaches for it, his expression mildly intrigued. It shifts immediately to perplexity. “You don’t know whose this is?”

“No, do you?”

Aziraphale just stares at him in befuddlement, until Crowley begins to get a bit cross. “If you don’t know, just say, angel!”

“Crowley…this feather…it’s _yours_!”

“What? Don’t be ridiculous, angel, it’s white. My feathers aren’t white.” He’s unreasonably proud that he’s managed to keep his voice level.

“Can’t you feel it? It has your essence on it. Faintly, to be sure, but…”

Crowley squints suspiciously, even though he knows Aziraphale won’t see it through the sunglasses. “You’re having me on.”

“No, _look_!”

And Aziraphale’s pressed their hands together, the feather between them, and there’s no way he should be able to feel _anything_ like that; it should all be drowned out by Aziraphale’s proximity.

But he does.

Aziraphale’s right, it’s faint, but there’s something there, something familiar.

He takes the feather back, and closes his eyes, concentrating fiercely, and yes, there’s something about it that says _Mine._

Almost before he’s registered it, he’s dropped the feather with a hiss, as if it burned him.

They watch it drift slowly to the floor.

“But…but this is impossible, it would have to be from before I Fell, and that was…”

“Ten millennia, I believe,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley’s surprised he remembers. Crowley himself has tried all too hard to forget. “Which accounts for the weakness of the traces.”

“But I don’t keep…and I _know_ you haven’t…where did it _come_ from?”

Aziraphale flicks his eyes briefly skyward. “Perhaps She–”

Crowley cuts him off before he can continue. “She’s buggered off, angel! If She wouldn’t listen to either of us when the sodding _Apocalypse_ is going on, if it’s been _ten thousand years_ since I Fell, why in the name of all that’s holy would She stick Her nose in now?” Crowley runs that sentence over again in his head, inwardly disgusted at the capitals, but there’s nothing he can do. Some habits are just too hard to break.

Aziraphale twitches slightly, probably at the swearing, but ventures, “Well, you _did_ help to stop the Apocalypse…”

Crowley snorts. “Right. What I did was _lose the Antichrist,_ spend eleven years babysitting the wrong boy, and put in about three words when the thing was going on.”

“But they were important words,” Aziraphale says. “As for losing the Antichrist, She must have known we’d try to interfere, so She set it up so that he could grow up normal...”

“If the next sentence out of your mouth includes the word _ineffable,_ so help me, angel, I am walking out that door and never coming back,” Crowley growls.

Aziraphale subsides, sheepishly.

“Look, I’m a _demon,_ in case you’ve forgotten!” Crowley snaps. “No forgiveness possible! Here, I’ll prove it!”

He unfolds his wings, looking at Aziraphale in half-triumph, half-despair, but the angel’s expression stops him dead.

Crowley’s never seen him so shocked, not even when _Fifty Shades of Grey_ topped the UK Bestseller List. “…Angel?”

“Crowley…your wings…” The words are hardly a breath, as though speaking aloud will break something.

“What _about_ them, angel?!”

Just then Crowley catches sight of his reflection in the dust-covered back room window. He stares for a moment, jaw dropping, then brings his wings forward so he can look at them.

The feathers aren’t black anymore.

They’re not white either. They’re a soft dove-grey. 

Crowley’s vision goes blurry, and he’s sure he’s hallucinating again, but Aziraphale sees them too, he must do, there’s no other explanation for his expression.

Then Aziraphale’s there, taking off his sunglasses and setting them aside, giving Crowley his shoulder to cry on.


End file.
